03 May 2008

Got Plot?

Today I saw a play called "The Last Five Years." It was an excellent musical about a man an a woman who fall in love, get married, fall out of love, and get divorced. So, how could such a standard plot be made original? The man's story went from the beginning of the relationship to the end, but the woman's went from the end to the beginning. All the songs were solos, except for one duet right in the middle of the play. Pretty cool, huh?

If the plot of a story you're working on feels tired, why not see if you can tell the story in a new way--like forwards and backwards at the same time!

4 comments:

Funny story about this: Back in 2002, I played bass on an album which had "I'm a Part of That" as one of the songs in it. I wanted to see the musical if only to get some context for the song (my theory was it was a song sung by a mother of an autistic child). I finally saw it a couple years later. It was interesting, but a bit of a downer as I was recently married when I saw it with my wife.

As for the meat of the topic, some other thoughts on changing up a story: Change the sex of your protagonist. Change the POV character.

A love story is really tough to write in a non-standard way. Kudos to the creative folks behind 'The Last Five Years' for putting a new spin on things. I had been trying to think of a non-standard love story and all I could think of was: person meets person and they fall in love...and it turns out they're clones. Okay, it's stupid, but have you seen it before? :)